JAKARTA: A convicted bombmaker who was released from prison last year attacked a police station in Indonesia’s main island of Java on Wednesday, killing an officer and wounding at least 10 others, officials said.
The attacker entered the Astana Anyar police station in Bandung, West Java at around 8:20 a.m. with a motorcycle, detonating one of two bombs he was carrying as officers gathered for a morning assembly. The other explosive was defused.
“This morning a suicide bomb attack took place and the perpetrator died,” National Police Chief Gen. Listyo Sigit Prabowo told reporters when he visited the station in the afternoon.
The injured comprised mostly police officers with at least one civilian wounded, he said.
“He is affiliated with Jamaah Ansharut Daulah group in Bandung or West Java, and at this time our team is continuing work to solve the incident that has occurred.”
Footage taken from the scene showed body parts near the damaged lobby of the station and people running out of the building as white smoke engulfed the facility.
Prabowo identified the attacker as Agus Sujatno and said dozens of notes were found at the crime scene with messages of protests against Indonesia’s new criminal code.
Also known by his alias Abu Muslim, he was released from the Nusakambangan prison island last year after completing a four-year sentence on charges of terrorist funding and making explosives used in a 2017 attack that also took place in Bandung.
“While in prison, he was not cooperative and was still hard-line,” Irfan Idris, deradicalization director at the National Counter-Terrorism Agency, told Arab News.
JAD, which had pledged allegiance to Daesh, was responsible for several other deadly suicide bombings in the world’s largest Muslim-majority nation.
This includes the 2018 church attacks in Surabaya that involved three families carrying out suicide bombings, killing nearly 30 people including the attackers themselves.
Stanislaus Riyanta, security and terrorism analyst from the University of Indonesia, said the attack was triggered by the new criminal code passed on Tuesday.
“They are looking for momentum. When they get it, such as with the passing of the new criminal code, they will use it,” Riyanta told Arab News.
Riyanta said Indonesian authorities should be cautious not only because the new criminal code was recently passed, but also ahead of Christmas and New Year holidays.
“This is a group with their own ideology, an ideology of violence, and they are anti-government, anti-democracy,” he added. “When there is a right moment, they will carry out their attacks.”
Suicide bombing at Indonesian police station kills officer, injures at least 10
https://arab.news/yh65d
Suicide bombing at Indonesian police station kills officer, injures at least 10
- Attacker was affiliated with Daesh-inspired JAD group, police say
- Dozens of notes protesting Indonesia’s new criminal code found around crime scene
Rubio says technical talks with Denmark, Greenland officials over Arctic security have begun
- US Secretary of State on Wednesday appeared eager to downplay Trump’s rift with Europe over Greenland
WASHINGTON: Technical talks between the US, Denmark and Greenland over hatching an Arctic security deal are now underway, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Wednesday.
The foreign ministers of Denmark and Greenland agreed to create a working group aimed at addressing differences with the US during a Washington meeting earlier this month with Vice President JD Vance and Rubio.
The group was created after President Donald Trump’s repeated calls for the US to take over Greenland, a Danish territory, in the name of countering threats from Russia and China — calls that Greenland, Denmark and European allies forcefully rejected.
“It begins today and it will be a regular process,” Rubio said of the working group, as he testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. “We’re going to try to do it in a way that isn’t like a media circus every time these conversations happen, because we think that creates more flexibility on both sides to arrive at a positive outcome.”
The Danish Foreign Ministry said Wednesday’s talks focused on “how we can address US concerns about security in the Arctic while respecting the red lines of the Kingdom.” Red lines refers to the sovereignty of Greenland.
Trump’s renewed threats in recent weeks to annex Greenland, which is a semiautonomous territory of a NATO ally, has roiled US-European relations.
Trump this month announced he would slap new tariffs on Denmark and seven other European countries that opposed his takeover calls, only to abruptly drop his threats after a “framework” for a deal over access to the mineral-rich island was reached, with NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte’s help. Few details of the agreement have emerged.
After stiff pushback from European allies to his Greenland rhetoric, Trump also announced at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, last week that he would take off the table the possibility of using American military force to acquire Greenland.
The president backed off his tariff threats and softened his language after Wall Street suffered its biggest losses in months over concerns that Trump’s Greenland ambitions could spur a trade war and fundamentally rupture NATO, a 32-member transatlantic military alliance that’s been a linchpin of post-World War II security.
Rubio on Wednesday appeared eager to downplay Trump’s rift with Europe over Greenland.
“We’ve got a little bit of work to do, but I think we’re going to wind up in a good place, and I think you’ll hear the same from our colleagues in Europe very shortly,” Rubio said.
Rubio during Wednesday’s hearing also had a pointed exchange with Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Virginia, about Trump repeatedly referring to Greenland as Iceland while at Davos.
“Yeah, he meant to say Greenland, but I think we’re all familiar with presidents that have verbal stumbles,” Rubio said in responding to Kaine’s questions about Trump’s flub — taking a veiled dig at former President Joe Biden. “We’ve had presidents like that before. Some made a lot more than this one.”
